War Metal Wiki talk:Projects/Tyrant/Missions
Please use this page to discuss . Please remember to sign your talk with 4 tildes ~~~~. ---- I see nothing wrong with this, especially as most of the information is already on the Mission pages. I reserve the right to disagree with some of the minutiae as this gets implemented: I'll be able to tell how it looks then.--Ryo Sangnoir 00:50, December 25, 2011 (UTC) No objections from me judging from the way the Arctis Prime page now looks. As long as I pick missions from the list on the left of Flash screen, that is. (And I will assume people are doing exactly the same.) - Hakdo 08:15, December 25, 2011 (UTC) I'll mark this project as approved, given the 2 Admins approving as Ryo Sangnoir and Hakdo. Slivicon 01:14, December 26, 2011 (UTC) DPL Test Run On Main Mission Page A test DPL table is now up at Ashrock for Main Missions, alongside the old table for Side Missions. There are some main differences: #The Gold column displays values from Missions XML, rather than the grinding payout (values from Missions XML/4) #Only has links to the respective Mission pages, missing links for the sub-section of the Area pages #Rewards cards have no link Seeking feedback. Hakdo 17:23, December 26, 2011 (UTC) As far as the table looks, I prefer the one with borders :) I presume reward cards will have links in the final version, for example by using tablerow=? I see no reason to remove the links. Grinding payout could also be displayed - this is probably more logical. Not sure subsections are necessary? TyrantMissionEnergyCost and the other templates are nicely concise, but I believe it would be neater to include all of the stats for the mission directly on the mission page, rather than referenced by a template. As it is, you call dpl on a page which references a set of master templates to draw its data - I would prefer to just put the data on the page. This has the advantage that whenever a new mission is added, it's a simple job to add its stats - under the XML, they're all together under the mission, and it doesn't require editing a large page - for example, with enough missions TyrantMissionPayoutGold could get rather large, which is slow(er) to edit and update (as it'd be invoked on ~200 mission pages in addition to area pages, so the job queue fills with ~800 jobs every time we need to add stats for a new mission). With Wikia's servers as they are this is less a concern that it may otherwise be, but there's my recommendation (store energy/gold/etc. directly on Mission X instead of under TyrantMissionPayout Gold under Mission X).--Ryo Sangnoir 18:05, December 26, 2011 (UTC) Ryo: #1 Unless I am misunderstanding you, under content for this project is The attributes of each mission are to be only recorded one time per mission across the entire Wiki. If you're advocating repeating the static values of mission attributes rather than dynamically transcluding them, this contradicts the very clearly stated objective; data in one spot and one spot only; updates are done to one spot and one spot only as a single source (D.R.Y.). I realize you stated "I reserve the right to object", but that needs to only apply to things not already clearly stated in the project write-up, it can't be a catch-all for not having read everything or changing one's mind, no offense. my bad Slivicon 01:35, December 28, 2011 (UTC) I imagine Hakdo intends the links to be there for rewards, may take more figuring out with dpl techniques. Ryo and Hakdo: The wikitable CSS class needs to be overridden anyway, in my opinion (possibly the sortable class as well), as it does not have borders. Modern web design states that table should no longer be used for layout (CSS, div, float, etc. should be used), but should be used strictly for tabular data. Tabular data is always more readable with borders. Apparently Wikia states this can be done by editing a specifically named file, but I've seen posts by other Wiki editors stating that it does not always work. Done. Slivicon 01:35, December 28, 2011 (UTC) Hakdo: Looks like a good first draft. I might suggest "Number Of Victories" instead of "Length of Victories", then dynamically have "Reward After n Victories" populated with n=NumVictories instead of "Reward After Full Completion" or similar. Minor points that are arguable, mainly just to see how the columns lay out for width, clarity of wording, etc. I would like to see if we can strip "Mission " out of the text for the mission link, too, but again, dependent on dpl techniques and templates, I suppose. Modified some column names for consideration. Slivicon 01:35, December 28, 2011 (UTC) Load on the server should be negligible since dpl caching is turned on. In fact, the caching can be a little too long in some cases. I've found myself doing a null edit just to update the cache on some pages. my bad Slivicon 01:35, December 28, 2011 (UTC) Slivicon 18:42, December 26, 2011 (UTC) Slivicon: I was recommending that the sole place that the attributes of the mission are to be recorded was to be the mission page, instead of a template containing all the exp data for all missions. Here's the way we currently have it: * * * * Each of these templates contains a single attribute for all missions. Each Mission X page invokes the templates, sometimes multiple times, for its parameters. Tyrant Missions then uses DPL to grab the parameter values which were generated by the template on the page Mission X. Here is the way I recommended: *Mission X The page for Mission X contains all attributes for a single mission. Tyrant Missions then uses DPL to grab the parameter values from Mission X. I hadn't factored in dpl into my comments about server load. Instead, the load comes from editing a widely-used template - the cache for every page needs to be (and is) refreshed, even though this does nothing, as adding a new mission to only affects that new mission, but the page Mission 1, which uses is still added to the job queue to be run through at times of low activity. For example, a recent edit to added categories for Bronze, Silver and Gold Packs. This added jobs to the queue to actually add the articles to those categories, as this otherwise requires null edits on the pages themselves.--Ryo Sangnoir 20:38, December 26, 2011 (UTC) OK, I definitely misunderstood you, then. I see what you are saying now and it makes sense to me that your suggested method of having the single storage spot be the mission page itself would be more efficient. I gather those templates are between you and Hakdo, as I don't believe I've contributed to those ones you listed. On a side note, I was able to update the example Hakdo started on Tyrant/Missions. Slivicon 21:12, December 26, 2011 (UTC) I added some additional introductory point form info about missions and how they work on Tyrant/Missions. My hope is that this would alleviate some of the need to have longer, more descriptive text in places like table columns where space is very limited. You may find you want it improved or removed altogether; I simply wanted to have an easily readable, brief "here's what missions are and how they work" blurb right at the start of the main missions page so that related pages wouldn't have to necessarily always write out long phrases such as "number of victories to completion" - with the intro, we could perhaps just say "battles" and then a number of battles and readers would "get it"... Slivicon 21:34, December 26, 2011 (UTC) Ryo: "TyrantMissionEnergyCost and the other templates are nicely concise, but I believe it would be neater to include all of the stats for the mission directly on the mission page, rather than referenced by a template... TyrantMissionPayoutGold could get rather large, which is slow(er) to edit and update (as it'd be invoked on ~200 mission pages in addition to area pages, so the job queue fills with ~800 jobs every time we need to add stats for a new mission)... the load comes from editing a widely-used template - the cache for every page needs to be (and is) refreshed, even though this does nothing, as adding a new mission to only affects that new mission, but the page Mission 1, which uses is still added to the job queue to be run through at times of low activity." *Sadly, this won't be possible with my understanding on MediaWiki, as also uses those temps. With my understanding, all I can do is to make those temps to behave like data tables, so we have a DRY database made with temps. That way, different templates can call the same bunch of templates for one single set of values, which adheres the DRY principle. Hakdo 18:19, December 27, 2011 (UTC) So what are the thoughts on being able to merge some of those columns to make the table fit into this layout? From my reading about dpl, I wonder if the solution is to do something like call a surrogate {TyrantMissions}.dpl that takes the passed %PAGE%, %TITLE% and other params and use parser functions to create a formatted table row that merges columns? Slivicon 01:30, December 28, 2011 (UTC) I've made an attempt at using a surrogate template for Tyrant/Missions#The Red Sands. Slivicon 07:01, December 29, 2011 (UTC) Next Steps So, a lot of work has been done and I think things are looking good for an initial build. I'd like to encourage discussion and feedback about where things are now as far as the use of templates and dpl within this project now that I think we're at a point where decisions need to be made before mass updating to the new system. Specifically, there was some earlier discussion about whether the existing ideas and tests were the most efficient use of templates and dpl. I don't consider myself an expert in this area, so please discuss and present any ideas for improvement. I have added some templates of my own as you will notice. Also, I moved away from using the commander artwork and am just using the card image, both because it shows the stats of the commander (which is something the old area pages were trying to do in static text) and because it doesn't introduce new images which didn't already exist. Also, it seemed easier to implement. If we go this route, will likely be of no more use (at least to this project). On the topic of subpages, I'm wondering if mission pages should also be subpages of Tyrant/Missions (i.e. Tyrant/Missions/Mission 29). For areas, I'm wondering if there should be a page listing the areas at Tyrant/Areas and area pages moved to be subpages of that (i.e. Tyrant/Areas/Arctis Prime). This may also make the automatic backlinks more useful. Some example pages where work has been done: *Tyrant/Missions *Tyrant/Arctis Prime *Tyrant/Winter Solstice/Winter Solstice 1 *Tyrant/Missions/Mission 29 Slivicon 16:27, December 31, 2011 (UTC) I was able to change to use dpl instead of the templates - there now seems nothing standing in the way of just storing the data directly on the mission pages, which is my preference. One problem with this template is that it calls additional parameters to the ones calls - specifically, "laterbetterexp" and the like, in addition to "meaning". "latterbetterexp" could be specified on the mission page as it is a fundamental property, although I wouldn't want "meaning" on there conceptually. As it is, I've called dpl on all the parameters individually - it would be more efficient to use a surrogate template or something like that (calling dpl only once), but I can't work out how to do that. On what exactly is to be stored on "Mission X" pages: *The core stuff that's in the XML seems self-evident :) *rpe, gpe, xppe - not sure about these - they can be generated from only the basic ones. Additionally, the method of generation is the same on every page. *laterbetterexp, etc.: they're a fundamental property of the missions, but they'll probably only be displayed on the grinding page. Probably not? If mission pages are made subpages will have to be redone as I've hardcoded the dpl based on the assumption they are where they are. This isn't an issue - it's just something I need to keep in mind - our heavy use of magic words could trip us up if we move things.--Ryo Sangnoir 18:00, December 31, 2011 (UTC) Slivicon: "On the topic of subpages, I'm wondering if mission pages should also be subpages of Tyrant/Missions (i.e. Tyrant/Missions/Mission 29). For areas, I'm wondering if there should be a page listing the areas at Tyrant/Areas and area pages moved to be subpages of that (i.e. Tyrant/Areas/Arctis Prime). This may also make the automatic backlinks more useful." *Put the areas alongside unlocking requirements for Tyrant/Areas? Speaking of which, the current Mission structure is somewhat on the messy side, with the current restructuring ideology. Let me see what improvements I can suggest. Hmm... okay, here goes my list: **Right now, individual Strategy pages are using TyrantMissionStrategy (itself a relatiely empty parent page), later I think I'll move them to under Tyrant/Mission/''MissionName''/Strategy. **Similar applies to Grinding pages. **Current TyrantMissionGrinding becomes Tyrant/Grinding/Mission - that is, does not belong to any Mission page. (But then we'll be able to write a true page about more than just mission grinding stuff... drop "/Mission"?) Current page, Reputation Grinding, for example, will be renamed Tyrant/Grinding/Reputation. *Hakdo 19:57, December 31, 2011 (UTC) Ryo: "I was able to change to use dpl instead of the templates - there now seems nothing standing in the way of just storing the data directly on the mission pages, which is my preference." *Uh... thanks? Hakdo 19:57, December 31, 2011 (UTC) Ryo: "On what exactly is to be stored on "Mission X" pages... rpe, gpe, xppe - not sure about these - they can be generated from only the basic ones. Additionally, the method of generation is the same on every page... laterbetterexp, etc... are a fundamental property of the missions, but they'll probably only be displayed on the grinding page. Probably not?" *These are not included inside the XML, but require data (energy, reputation, gold, xp) to calc, which can be actually extracted from the XML. I was planning to include them so that I could use DPLs to include. Now that more sophisticated DPLs are implemented to process inputs here and there, I don't mind them being removed from the Mission pages anymore. Hakdo 19:57, December 31, 2011 (UTC) Ryo: "One problem with this template is that it calls additional parameters to the ones calls - specifically, "laterbetterexp" and the like, in addition to "meaning". "latterbetterexp" could be specified on the mission page as it is a fundamental property, although I wouldn't want "meaning" on there conceptually." *Again, these are not included inside the XML, but require a comparison of calced data (gpe, rpe, xppe). However, in order to automate generation of these cells, we need one pre-made DPL per Local Faction, plus one for Gold, one for XP and one for unlocking requirement; and create DPLs to use these tables to determine prevbetterxp, laterbetterxp, etc. So I think I will vote to leave those "better" params intact for the time being. *As for meaning, it is an input String to remind players what achievement(s) is/are exclusive for a particular mission, and if that mission is a good energy dump. Hakdo 19:57, December 31, 2011 (UTC) Sounds good. I'm not sure if I follow about the mission pages moving, Ryo...it looks to me as though you are using SUBPAGENAME, so wherever the page moves, it should be fine? SUBPAGENAME of "Mission 21" is "Mission 21"; SUBPAGENAME of "Tyrant/Missions/Mission 21" is "Mission 21" as well, or am I misunderstanding (again)? Perhaps we can test putting the mission parameters directly into the Winter Solstice missions and then perhaps another mission that has reputation. So, I gather we are aiming to put the mission values from the XML into the mission pages, but the other parameters that Hakdo created stay where they are on the grinding pages. Hakdo, if and when you get a chance, I started you off on War Metal Wiki:Projects/Tyrant/Grinding and War Metal Wiki:Projects/Tyrant/Strategy in case you wanted to lay out your objectives with those two projects. Slivicon 20:07, December 31, 2011 (UTC) Example *TyrantMissionGrindingHeader is included on TyrantMissionGrinding/Mission X *the dpl looks for a page satisfying |title= (=Mission X) *If moved, it needs to look for a page satisfying Tyrant/Missions/ --Ryo Sangnoir 20:57, December 31, 2011 (UTC) *Could we consider titlematch or titleregexp? Possibly titleregexp=.*\/*Mission X (or something, although I suppose that could lead to problems, too) Slivicon 21:24, December 31, 2011 (UTC) DPL Issue So, I ran into a problem with where title<= and title>= don't work if the titles have different lengths...or so it seems. For example, Tyrant/Arctis and Tyrant/Triton Isle have mission numbers that go from 1 digit to 2 digits and 2 digits to 3 digits, respectively. The dpl in fails with these two ranges as can be seen on Tyrant/Missions. I'll have to investigate, but does anyone have a solution they might already know? Slivicon 19:23, January 2, 2012 (UTC) My assumption here would be that it's doing them alphabetically instead of numerically (ASCII order). Easiest thing to do here would seem to be just to special-case those two jump points - do 6-9, then 10, and likewise for the other.--Ryo Sangnoir 19:48, January 2, 2012 (UTC) * Thanks for the suggestion. That would likely work, but I wouldn't mind finding a fix that doesn't require any special case exceptions, if at all possible. For now, I've commented out the use of first and last parameters in so it doesn't prevent results from being displayed (it just shows more results than intended) until a final fix is found... Slivicon 20:04, January 2, 2012 (UTC) :* I made the first and last parameters optional, and remove them from Arctis and Triton Isle - this should work unless side missions or extra missions are added there.--Ryo Sangnoir 20:44, January 2, 2012 (UTC) ::* Further to this, I moved to using titleregexp and passing numeric ranges as a hopefully more comprehensive solution. Slivicon 01:25, January 8, 2012 (UTC) How do I update the values on Tyrant/Missions? As 1.10.19 just went live, I wanted to update the energy values for the Winter Solstice missions, but I couldn't figure out how. I went to the individual pages (Winter Solstice 1, Winter Solstice 2, etc), and updated the energy there, but I do not see it reflected on the Tyrant/Missions page. Is there a cache that needs to be reloaded (if so, how do I trigger that/who do I need to ask to trigger that?), or is there some other mechanism? -- Shoone 21:09, January 3, 2012 (UTC) *You may need to do a null edit on Tyrant/Missions in order to force a refresh of the dpl cache; basically edit Tyrant/Missions, make no changes and click publish. This doesn't register a change in the edit history but it will force the dpl cache to refresh. Slivicon 21:49, January 3, 2012 (UTC) ** Wonderful, that did it, thanks! Shoone 22:00, January 3, 2012 (UTC) Re: Proposal: Additional Architecture I agree the proposal in full. Hakdo 10:27, January 4, 2012 (UTC) As a reference to Winter Solistce, we see that Side missions don't constantly have 4 in a series. However, the Side missions don't have sub-name, like Imperial Traitor - Revenge 1. I guess in Architechture, the new page name can be changed to Tyrant/Missions/Side Mission Series Name/Number, omitting the extra side mission name. 03:38, March 24, 2012 (UTC) *It appears I mistakenly moved side mission pages to Tyrant/SideMissionSeries/SideMission instead of Tyrant/Missions/SideMissionSeries/SideMission. We'll need to correct that and pay attention to the ripple effect on links and templates, fixing/adjusting where necessary. *Having a subpage of just a number isn't in line with the approved project, so that would require a new project proposal. My $0.02 is that although the full page name would be simpler, the subpagename on it's own could be ambiguous, causing headaches later on for dpl calls or other templates, etc. that may wish for a more identifiable subpagename on it's own. Slivicon 13:31, March 24, 2012 (UTC)